The play is based on real events and is an award winning modern classic.

The story of convicts and Royal Marines sent to Australia in the late 1780s as part of the first penal colony that was later to become the city of Sydney. It chronicles the governor’s decision to put on a play to celebrate the king’s birthday and follows Second Lieutenant Ralph Clark's attempts to put on a production of George Farquhar's restoration comedy ‘The Recruiting Officer’ with a cast of male and female convicts. The play shows the class system in the convict camp and discusses themes such as sexuality, punishment, the Georgian judicial system, and the idea that art can act as an ennobling force.

The play is to be cast with newly-arrived English convicts. These unwitting and unwilling pioneers face starvation, the brutality of guards, and unknown terrors of a strange and wild land. Few can read, few can act, and yet what emerges on stage is as true today as in 1789—the restorative power of theatre to enlighten the best in us and transcend the worst.

The play is regarded as one of the most significant of the 20th Century.
Written by British playwright, Timberlake Wertenbaker, she adapted it from the Thomas Keneally* novel 'The Playmaker'. First staged at the Royal Court Theatre, London in 1988.

*Thomas Keneally, more famously known as the author of ‘Schindlers List’ – (aka ‘Schindlers Ark’).